The use of email is used extensively in communications. Users of email generally receive several messages each day on a desktop or laptop computer. Each message may contain written text and often contains one or more enclosures such as electronic text documents and graphic images, including facsimile images.
The prior art includes server and software systems that facilitate the delivery and sending of email to and from email users. In one system, for example, a server couples between the Internet and a local area network of a corporation; multiple computers of corporate employees couple with the local area network to communicate with the server to send and receive email. One well-known server of the prior art is the MICROSOFT EXCHANGE® server. One well-known software system operable on individual computers is MICROSOFT OUTLOOK®. Collectively, corporate email users with MICROSOFT OUTLOOK® and connected with the local area network may communicate with the MICROSOFT EXCHANGE® server to send and receive email through the Internet, as known in the art.
The management of email may be critical to a corporate business. To manage email, the corporation or its email users sometimes save email within electronic storage memory, e.g., internal memory or a server. Often, however, electronically stored email messages become a voluminous congregation of email messages that is too unwieldy to utilize effectively. Email is also sometimes printed onto paper for manual storage; such printing may include printing of the email message, i.e., its written text, and any enclosure. Similar to electronic storage, however, manual storage of email text and enclosures is equally difficult to manage, over time. A corporation may need to store thousands of emails each week, requiring a dedicated staff to store the email within file cabinets so that the written text and enclosures (e.g., graphic images) of the email are stored and recorded for use at a later date.
Another problem of the prior art is that email text and attachments may be corrupted, modified or deleted when stored in native electronic form. By way of example, modification or corruption may occur when subsequent users of stored email open attachments to make changes or comments. There is therefore the risk that if the email text and/or attachment are required at a future date, they may not be available as originally received, if at all. Companies utilizing email communication systems often implement manual processes, such as drafting and mailing a letter, and/or physically printing and scanning attachments into a graphic form via a scanner, in order to memorialize data.
The invention seeks to advance the state of the art in email and software systems by providing methods and systems for automatically managing email so as to securely memorialize email for future workflow. Several other features of the invention are apparent within the description that follows.